Free Falling
by Valkyrium
Summary: Trapped on a deserted island, Piper and Alex are forced to rely on each other to survive until help arrives, trying to navigate their way around the wilderness, their troubled past and the machinations of the other survivors. Slight Au,
1. A chance encounter

_**Chapter 1**_

_A chance encounter._

"I know it's not _likely_. I mean, in the last ten years there has been… what? Four Transatlantic crashes? If you take into account the sheer amount of daily flights, the percentage of accidents has to be insanely low, right?" Larry asked with a nervous grin, inspecting the waiting area of the airport with wary eyes.

Flying to France for a quick getaway had been his idea in the first place—Piper had been strangely reluctant to accept, but she had eventually agreed to the trip, mostly because she had been unable to come up with a good reason not to—but now the reality of the seven hour flight was really starting to catch up with him and his nerves were beginning to show.

"Besides, according to all the statistics the drive here was the most dangerous part of the journey and we rocked that, didn't we Pipes?"

Piper gave him a distracted nod, keeping her eyes focused on the floor in front of her as they made their way towards a cluster of free seats located on the far side of the room, her mind a million miles away from the conversation.

Larry was about to go on about the statistics of a car crash versus a flight one—he had spend the night before digging information on the internet about it—when he noticed Piper's lack of attention and he let out a quiet sigh. While he had grown more anxious the closer to the flight, Piper had turned more absentminded, and she was now prone to getting lost in thought.

He could have simply called her on it, but Larry discarded that thought almost right away; there were better ways to get her attention.

"Hey Pipes? I think there's a woman checking me out." Larry continued, making an effort to keep his tone even. "She's tall, leggy, has this cute pair of glasses and she hasn't taken her eyes off me since we arrived, so I think I have a rather good chance. What do you think, should I go for it?"

Another nod, followed by a double-take as Piper's jealous streak kicked in and she finally registered what he had said. "Wait, what?"

"You weren't listening." Larry replied, shrugging innocently. "I figured that would catch your attention."

Piper let out a soft sigh, lowering her head in regret. "Sorry, I was distracted."

"So I've noticed," Larry agreed. "What's on your mind, oh girlfriend of mine?"

_My ex_, Piper automatically replied in the privacy of her own mind, but she was wise enough not to voice that thought out loud.

"Nothing," She replied instead. "Like I said, I was just… distracted."

This was the first time that Piper has had to set foot in an airport since the day she had decided to fly away from the life she had build for herself in Europe—and the woman with whom she had shared it—so it was turning out to be damned near impossible to keep all the memories at bay.

"Well, you didn't miss much." Larry informed her, sitting down on the nearest free spot with a contented sigh and inviting Piper to do the same. "It was just my latest freak out about the flight, so it's probably for the best that you didn't hear it."

Piper had to fight the urge to roll her eyes in exasperation; after all, it wasn't Larry's fault that she had gone through this song and dance enough times to become immune to flight nerves. The first time that Piper had gotten on a plane she had been more than a little scared herself, but that panic had died out quickly enough.

Back in those days, it had been impossible to hang on to fears or doubts for long. Not when Alex Vause was around to soothe them.

"_Relax kid; I do this all the time." Alex whispered in Piper's ear as she wrapped her hands around the blonde's waist, pulling Piper's body flush against hers. "It will be okay, trust me."_

"I used to do this all the time." Piper echoed, trying to infuse her words with the same confidence that Alex used to exude at the same time that she shock the memory off. "We'll be fine, trust me."

"Right, I forgot I'm traveling with a veteran here." Larry teased her gently. "You've been to France before, haven't you?"

Piper had _lived_ in France before, but that was another thing that was probably best left unsaid. "Yeah, that's one of the places I visited."

"I bet you're looking forward to staying in a real hotel this time. It couldn't have been easy to find a place to crash with the budget of a backpacker, right?"

An awkward laugh escaped from Piper's lips as her eyes shifted away from Larry's face. She had told him about most of her adventures in the old continent, but she may have lied _a bit _about the quality of said trip.

Somehow, back when Larry first asked about it, her first panic induced instinct had been to tell him that she and her 'friend' had been on the kind of money that you could expect from a couple of backpackers, and it wasn't until she had talked to Polly later that day that it occurred to Piper that saying that her 'friend' was stinking rich would have probably been a better option.

In her defense, she had been too worried about covering up the fact that she had done all her traveling on the pocket of a very wealthy drug dealer to think clearly.

"Yeah, it wasn't… pretty." Piper agreed, trying to keep her face straight and telling herself that it wasn't a lie.

The place that Alex had found for them had not been pretty; gorgeous, sure, even breath-taking, but certainly not 'pretty'.

"You'll have to show it to me, once we get there."

"Don't think I have forgotten about your little joke about a woman checking you out." Piper fired back, desperate to change the subject. "It wasn't funny."

"It wasn't a joke." Larry replied with a smile that vanished when Piper sent him a dark glare. "I mean, the part about me hitting on her was, of course, but there really was a woman checking me out."

"What? Where is she?" The_: I'll kill her_, was left unspoken but Larry still picked up on it, prompting an awkward laugh to fall from his lips.

Piper had never been good at sharing.

"She was over there." Larry pointed out, raising their joint fingers towards a section of the crowd. "She and her friend couldn't take their eyes off me, and really, can you blame them?" He joked, flexing his muscles in jest, hoping to defuse the situation.

Piper ignored his antics; too busy scanning the crowd with fire in her eyes for a woman that matched the rather brief description Larry had given her to pay attention, and just when she was about to give up and call Larry a liar (there was a rather surprising lack of women with glasses around), her eyes found a flash of black and blue hair that made her heart clench inside her chest, sending all thoughts of her boyfriend and his stalker out of her mind.

Piper jumped to her feet, but before she could do anything else, the crowd shifted once again and the owner of the hair disappeared from her line of sight, leaving her to look wildly around the airport for the hint of something she didn't dared to think about.

"I think she's gone, honey." Larry said tentatively, squeezing Piper's hand and guiding her back towards the seat.

Piper sank down into her seat, gazing at the airport with a weariness that felt out of place considering the hour of the day. It wasn't even dark yet, and she already felt exhausted.

Alex had been gone for seven years now and if nothing else, her break-up with the woman had taught her that time truly heals all wounds—or at least it does a rather fantastic job at scabbing them over— even the impossibly big ones.

Nowadays she rarely found herself sparing a thought towards the dark-haired woman that had taken her world by storm seven years ago, and yet...

"Yeah," Piper muttered after a few moments with a defeated sigh. "She's gone."

* * *

Alex recognized her the second that Piper drifted into the waiting area of the airport.

The woman didn't look a day older than she had the last time they had seen each other, and even the different hair cut wasn't enough to hide her from Alex's gaze, not when the blonde woman had once been as much part of Alex's life as her own reflection.

One second she had been joking around with Nichols—detailing to the woman in vivid detail all the things that they could do once they landed in Paris—and the next, like something out of a dream (or perhaps out of a nightmare) Piper fucking Chapman was strutting back into Alex's life, dressed like the WASP-y bitch that she had always been and nodding along distractedly at whatever the hell the idiot on her arm was babbling about.

And make no mistake; Alex knew that the man was a fucking idiot. It took a severe mental disability to even begin to _consider_ dating Piper fucking Chapman, and there was no doubt in Alex mind that the dark haired man was Piper's boyfriend.

(The idea that he could very well be Piper's husband did crossed Alex's mind, but she vanished the thought almost as soon as it arrived. A married Piper wasn't something that she was ready to deal with. Ever)

After all, Alex knew all too well what it looked like, to be in love with that girl.

"What's going on Vause?" Nichols asked, moving around the petrified form of her friend to peer at the couple that was walking towards them with curious eyes. "You look like you just saw a ghost."

"You could say that." Alex whispered softly, squaring her shoulders and wracking her brain for the perfect witty one-liner to use in the imminent encounter.

An encounter that never occurred because a second later Alex got to watch with something that resembled shock as the couple passed beside them without sparing them a single glance.

Well… Fuck.

Nichols let out a guffaw at the stricken look on Alex's face, barely managing to contain herself until the couple was out of range before doubling over in her mirth, something that would have offended Alex if she wasn't so goddamned shocked at the moment.

As it was, she only managed to let out a raspy, "Shut up, Nichols," without dragging her eyes away from Piper's retreating form.

Because, fuck, that wasn't how their reunion was supposed to turn out. Not at all.

Alex had always imagined that when she ran into Piper again (and that had always been a when, because even at her worst, Alex had always known that Piper would cross paths with her once again, sooner or later) it would be something _monumental_.

Their eyes would meet across the room—any room they found themselves in—drawn together by the same magnetic force that had always defined their every interaction, and Alex would finally get the chance to rub on Piper's face all the things that she had missed out on when she had decided to walk away from her that day.

It would be something beautiful, and after that… well, the ending to that particular fantasy had never been set on stone, forever changing along with Alex's current mood.

Sometimes it went on to become a steamy: '_I have seen the error of my ways, take me now Alex_' sex fantasy, and others it turned into a revenge fueled daydream that ended with Alex walking away from a crying, broken Piper, vindicated at long last.

Either way, it was a nice dream, and Alex really should have known better than to trust it would come true. For all the countries that she had visited and all the people that she had known, Alex had yet to find someone that was more self-absorbed that Piper fucking Chapman.

It should have been obvious that the bitch wouldn't even notice her.

"That an Ex, Vause?" Nichols asked her with a grin, tossing one of her arms around the taller woman's shoulders in a display of camaraderie. "I don't think she saw us, but maybe you're just not as memorable in the sack as you would like to think."

"That's _the_ Ex," Alex clarified, shooting a meaningful glance over the top of her glasses at her friend, one of the few people in her life that knew anything about Piper. "And there's no way _anyone_ could forget sleeping with me, Nichols. You should know."

"There's a reason we only did that once, Vause." Nichols bantered back absentmindedly, her eyes focused on the retreating back of Piper and the man holding her hand. "And you're telling me that the WASP-y woman over there is the infamous Piper Chapman?"

"First of all, it's Piper _fucking_ Chapman; you know that." Alex sighed, watching as couple settled down in one of the seats scattered around the room. "And yes, that would be her."

Nichols studied the blonde woman with a critical eye. Back when Alex had first told her about Piper—a nigh confession after a few hours filled with a lot of booze, drugs and their one and only hook up—Nichols had pictured the woman as a super model, someone of incomparable beauty and charisma.

Someone that so special, that even Alex had not dared to try and turn her into a drug mule.

Now, while the woman was undeniably pretty, Nichols had seen Alex hang around women far more beautiful and exotic and if the absent air in the infamous Piper's eyes was anything to go by, the woman didn't posses any kind of super-natural charisma.

And yet, somehow, the blonde WASP had managed to snare the wild heart of her friend, and—despite whatever protests Alex would raise if asked—she still held it in her grasp after almost a decade of separation.

"What are the odds that we're on the same flight as them?" Nichols asked after a few moments of silence.

"Statistically? I would say one in twenty, or something along those lines." Alex drawled, putting her glasses on top of her head and rubbing the bridge of her nose in an effort to ward off an incoming headache. "In reality? I would bet you my entire fortune that she's—not only in our flight—but also in the same class and sitting no farther than three seats away from us."

"Way to be optimist, Vause." Nichols chuckled.

"In my line of work, you don't survive by hoping for the best case scenario." Alex replied, turning in her heels, shrugging off Nichols arm and walking towards a more secluded corner of the room. The last thing that she needed was for Piper to finally get her blonde head out of her goddamned ass and look around to catch Alex staring. "Besides, it is always a mistake to underestimate just how much the Universe hates me."

"True enough." Nichols acknowledged, staring at Piper for another second before following Alex, finding her friend leaning against a column that blocked her from Piper's view. "Now, what's the plan, Vause? Are we going to hide out here until she boards, or do you want us to change flights, just in case?"

As tempting as the last option was, Alex's pride wasn't about to let her run away from anyone, less of all Piper fucking Chapman, and that left her with precious few options.

"She's always one of the first persons to board." Alex sighed, letting her glasses fall back onto her face and casting her eyes towards the ground." We can get in right behind her. She'll be too busy checking out her seat and taking a peak out the window to notice us."

Nichols refrained on commenting about Alex's knowledge of Piper's habits, but a smirked appeared on her face all the same. "And what if she sees us?"

"She won't."

"Hey, you're the one that told me that we should be preparing for the worse." Nichols pointed out.

Alex let out another weary sigh, unable to battle against her own logic. "Then she sees us, and you get to be my girlfriend that I'm taking to Paris for a romantic trip."

"Lucky me." Nichols drawled, grin still firmly in place as she stepped out of their corner and leaned against the opposite side of Alex's column, watching Piper with barely concealed amusement.

The blonde WASP had jumped out of her seat at some point, and she was now gazing around the airport wildly, no doubt trying to find someone, and Nichols had a pretty good idea of who that person may be.

Their flight, it seemed, had just became that much more interesting.

* * *

**I really should be working on my other fic, or on the other project I'm juggling (one that actually pays some bills) but I couldn't get this paring out of my mind, so here you have it. It will be a quick adventure and sadly I don't think I'll be able to give it as much attention as it deserves (so please forgive any mistakes you may encounter) but I hope you enjoy it all the same.**

**As always, thanks for reading.**

**Valkyrium.**


	2. The worst case scenario

**Chapter Two:**

_The worst case scenario._

Sometimes Alex hated to be right.

"Remind me never to bet against you, woman." Nichols whispered with a teasing grin dancing on her lips as she took a sip from her glass of champagne. "You're a god dammed psychic."

"_Fuck you,_" Alex enunciated silently before turning her attention back to her own drink, downing the rest of the champagne in one long gulp and setting down the empty glass in her tray, hoping that the flight attendant would take pity on her and refill it one more time.

This was her fourth glass in less than two hours, and while that wasn't nearly enough alcohol to give Alex more than the mildest of buzzes, she had seen the looks that the flight attendant had started to send her way. It wouldn't be long now before she was cut off.

Like her life wasn't bad enough already, they wanted to take away her booze too.

"Come on, you have to admit that it's kind of fun just how right you were, Va-"Nichols didn't get the chance to finish the word because Alex jabbed her elbow into her friend ribs, stopping her before she could finish speaking. "Fuck! You have sharp elbows, _woman_." Nichols corrected immediately, rubbing her side dramatically. "I think you broke something."

Alex rolled her eyes, reaching down to lay her seat flat and turning her back to the theatrics of her companion, hoping to get some sleep. Maybe then she would wake up to find that this whole day had just been a particularly bad dream because, regardless of what she might have said about preparing for the worse, Alex still couldn't quite believe her own bad luck.

Somehow, just as she had predicted, their seats had ended up located in the row of seats directly behind the ones occupied by Pipper and her moronic boyfriend, a man named _Larry_ (the name of the moron and the nature of his relationship with Piper became obvious after two hours of listening in to their saccharine conversation), and if Alex was forced to hear them plan their vacation _one more time_ (most of their plans involved not leaving the hotel anyway, fuck them) she was going to have to use her complimentary barf bag for the first time ever.

"I don't see what the big deal is," Nichols whispered again after a few minutes of quiet, causing Alex to roll her eyes again, a common reaction when hanging out with Nichols. Her friend had never been good with silence. "Was the break up really that bad that?"

Alex remained immobile, unwilling to comment on the final hours of her relationship with Piper and hoping that Nichols would take the hint and leave the subject alone.

"Ok, let's say it was." Nichols acknowledged after a minute of silence, her voice a harsh whisper. "It was a fucking miracle that she didn't see us when we boarded, and if it wasn't for this," she gestured towards the privacy curtain that separated them from the rest of the passengers, "she would have busted our asses hours ago. There's no way we're going to get away with sneaking past them once we land, you know that, right?"

She knew, but there was no way that Alex would willingly submit herself to the five hours of pure awkwardness that would undoubtedly occur if Piper discovered her presence here and now, so she remained stubbornly silent. It was better to let that particular encounter happen on solid ground; at least there Alex had plenty of room to escape if things took a turn for the sour.

Now it was just a matter of making Nichols understand her reasoning, so Alex turned back to face her friend and attempted to communicate once again.

"_We just need to survive the flight_." She articulated as carefully as she could. "_It won't matter after that_."

"I didn't get any of that," Nichols sighed after a few moments, letting her head fall back against her seat. "You know, this 'silent storm' thing was fun at first, but it's getting old really, really fast. I can't believe I'm about to admit this, but I miss hearing you talk, woman."

Alex's response consisted only of an apologetic shrug and a grimace, prompting an exasperated groan to fall out of Nichols' lips

"Fine, whatever, be a mute if you want to. I'm going to catch a nap." Nichols said, closing her eyes and slipping on her headphones, burrowing down in her seat (completely upright, since she refused to sleep lying down while on a plane, no matter how comfortable Alex claimed it was) and turned her back to Alex. "Wake me up when the shit hits the fan. That ought to be interesting to watch."

Giving up on the idea of sleeping, Alex snapped her seat upright and turned her weary eyes towards Nichols resting form, watching as the woman fell into a peaceful sleep in a matter of minutes.

It wasn't that she didn't want to talk, but Alex simply couldn't take the chance that Piper would recognize her rather distinctive voice, so she had refused to say a word since they boarded the plane. Once they landed in France Alex would find a way to make it up to her friend somehow.

"You know, this isn't so bad." The muffled voice reached Alex's ears, breaking her out of her musings and making her grimace. Oh good, just what she needed, the moron was speaking again. "I mean, I know we're only two hours in, but I'm getting a very good vibe from this flight."

"I told you, honey. The first class is always located on the most stable part of the plane, so any turbulence is kept to a minimum." That voice Alex had more conflict with; so far she hadn't been able to decide if it caused her pain or pleasure to hear it.

Definitely not indifference, though, and wasn't that a bitch?

"Have you flown on first class before?"

"I-I think I flew in first once, with my mother." A nervous laugh followed that affirmation, and Alex wondered if the moron really was enough of an idiot to miss the fact that Piper was lying, and doing it badly at that. "But that was the only time, I think. My friend and I traveled in coach the last time."

A growl formed on Alex's throat, and she barely managed to keep herself from speaking up. This was the second time that Piper had said something that implied that their time together had been spent with a low budget, and both times Alex had felt her blood boil inside her veins.

If there was one thing that Piper should _not_ get to complain about, ever, it was the quality of life that Alex had provided for her while they were dating—not after how much Alex had worked every day to keep it that way—and now that damned WASP went around telling the world that her girlfriend had been a cheap bastard?

Not that Alex had gotten even that much; it seemed that somewhere along the line she had been reduced to 'Piper's friend from college'.

That last piece of news had shocked Alex when she had first overheard it, but after everything else that she had learned about the 'new' Piper during the flight, Alex wasn't even sure why it had surprised her so much.

One would think she would have seen it coming by now.

_Perhaps_, Alex reflected while watching intensely the curtain that divided her from Piper, _it's for the same reason that it still hurts so goddamned much_.

"You know, you have never told me much about this friend of yours. What was the deal with her?"

"There's not much to tell." Piper began, her voice reaching Alex as a tentative whisper, and Alex's fingers dug into the armrest of her seat with enough force to make them creak as she waited to hear the end of that thought. "She was just… convenient."

Piper went on to explain how they had shared the common interest of seeing the world and how that interest had brought them together for a short period of time only to make them drift apart once it had been fulfilled, but Alex didn't registered any of that. She was too busy shaking with rage to pay any attention.

Convenient? Of all the fucking words in the English language, and Piper had decided that _convenient_ was the one that better described her relationship to Alex?

Fuck that. Or better yet, fuck _her_.

If that's what she thought, maybe Alex should let the moron decide for himself just how _convenient_, Alex had been back then. There were tons of stories she could amuse him with about her time as Piper's 'friend' if he was so damned curious.

After all, Alex still had five hours left to kill and she was sure that the moron would get a kick out of hearing the squirting story.

Before she could think better of it Alex yanked the privacy curtain open and stood up—ready to wreck some havoc on Piper's carefully constructed life and _enjoy_ it—but she never got the chance because the plane choose that second to rock violently to the side, a move that drew a few screams from the passengers and sent Alex tumbling back into her seat.

Before Alex could recover from _that_, the plane suffered a sudden drop of altitude that dropped her stomach to the bottom of her feat, sending her scrambling for her seat-belt seconds before the alarm lit up and the rest of the passengers had to follow suit.

"Please, remain calm." The flight attendant, a pretty brunet that looked painfully uncomfortable addressing the crowd, requested immediately. "We're experiencing some clear-air turbulence; it's nothing to worry about."

The passengers seemed mildly mollified by the news, but Alex wasn't buying it. She had been in enough planes to know what turbulence felt like, and the way this plane was shaking was like nothing she had ever felt before.

The flight attendant carried on with the security protocols—demonstrating the proper position to adopt in case of an emergency and pointing out how to tighten the seat-belt—while Alex used the time to take a series of deep breath, slipping on the mask of calm detachment that she had created to aid her when conducting important, drug related business, shoving her building panic into a box inside her brain and locking it away for the time being.

"Wake up, Nichols." Alex drawled softly once she felt in control of her emotions, confident that the sound of her voice wouldn't carry over the moron's hysterical yelps and the flight attendant's instructions, ripping the headphones off her friend ears with a sharp tug. "The shit just hit the fan."

As soon as the headphones cleared her head, Nichols eyes snapped open and she took in the situation around her with wide eyes, registering the plane's vibration for the first time.

"What-"Nichols' question was interrupted by a jarring, metallic screech that echoed across the plane—a sound so loud that Alex was forced to cover her hears in pain—mere seconds before the plane plummeted a second time, a move that caused the oxygen masks to drop down from their hiding spots and that sent the flight attendant to the ground, scrambling for her own seat-belt. "This wasn't what I had in mind when you told me to prepare for the worse, Vause!"

Alex shrugged innocently, slipping the oxygen mask over her mouth and doing her best to ignore the rest of the passengers, most which were already hysterically screaming that they didn't want to die and praying to the god of their choice for deliverance. "I told you that it was a mistake to underestimate how much the Universe hates me."

"Fuck the Universe!" Nichols shouted, fastening her seat-belt and mask seconds before a third loss of height rocked the plane with enough violence to make the flight attendant scream along with the rest of the passengers.

"This is Captain Hawking speaking." A male's voice rang out through the sound systems, barely audible through the general pandemonium in the cabin. "Everything's under control. Please, remain in your seats and assume the crash position; we will be performing an emergency water landing immediately."

The communication broke off after that, but not fast enough that the passengers couldn't hear the muffled curse that escaped from the Captain's mouth once he had finished addressing the cabin.

"That's not good," Nichols whispered beside her, and Alex nodded in silent agreement.

Her business had been build around knowing people—reading their reactions and detecting their involuntary responses in order to better manipulate them—and the Captain's voice had made it clear to Alex that the man was scared shitless and that, much like herself, he had simply done his best not to show it.

In short, it was not good at all.

"You heard that, Pipes?" The moron's voice reached Alex's ears, cutting through the sounds of the rest of the passengers' screams with startling clarity, something that annoyed Alex to no end. "He said that everything's fine, so everything _has to be_ fine, right?"

The plane chose that moment to rock sideways, eliciting another round of screaming from the already scared passengers.

"I-I don't…" Even through the commotion, Alex could hear Piper's labored breathing. It was clear that the blonde had a much clearer idea of what was really going on and she was struggling to keep a semblance of calm. "Honey, I-"

Alex unbuckled her seat-belt before she had even realized what she had done—her body reacting to Piper's distress with the same urgency that it had always displayed in their time together—and she lunged forward to hang onto the back of the moron's seat, ignoring the flight attendants and Nichols shouts for her to stop, so she could lay a comforting hand on Piper's shoulder as soon as she was close enough to do so.

The blonde woman let out a shrill scream at the contact, but Alex simply added a bit more strength to her grip and waited. Sure enough, a second later, Piper rose from the crash position and turned her head around to face her.

"Hey there," Alex greeted once Piper's eyes met her own, slipping off her oxygen mask and offering the blonde a tentative smile. "Is this a bad time to say hello?"

* * *

**There you go, I hope you enjoy it. Thanks for all the reviews, favorites and follows, I was really blown away by the response my little fic generated and I appreciate each one of them profoundly. I already have most of the next chapter finished so you can expect a somewhat faster update, I would have added some of it to this one but I couldn't resist the chance to end the chapter with **_**that**_** phrase.**

**As always, thanks for reading.**

**Valkyrium.**


	3. The great escape

**Chapter Three:**

_The great escape._

When the plane fist started to show signs of malfunctions, Piper's mind had slipped into a comforting cocoon of denial to help keep the panic at bay. Unwilling to accept the possibility that her plane could be _really_ going down, she had followed all the emergency protocols with a kind numb detachment—the same one that she remembered from her last flight across the Atlantic, and wasn't that ironic?—and it wasn't until the Captain's dire message had resounded throughout the cabin that Piper's mental walls had finally faltered and reality had seeped inside her carefully constructed defenses.

In that second she had become aware of Larry's panicked grip on her forearm and of the screams and pleas for mercy of her fellow passengers; the panic that she had refused to acknowledge finally took hold of her mind, poisoning all rational thought as it went and threatening to turn Piper into a crying, hysterical mess if left unchecked.

It had been the worst moment of her life, when she had looked beside her to find Larry staring back at her with the same fear she felt present on his eyes while she tried to figure out what to say, knowing that whatever came out of her mouth next could very well end up being the last words she would ever say to _anyone_.

Fortunately for her, all the panic had been dashed away the second a hand had dropped down on her shoulder from behind her seat, and now Piper had gone back to the: '_This is just a crazy dream'_ theory, because there was no other explanation as of why Alex Vause would suddenly be standing behind her; those same grey-green eyes that Piper still saw sometimes in her dreams shining with an unknown emotion and a devil may care smile plastered on her face as she swayed along with the plane's motions.

"Alex?" Piper asked breathlessly, deaf once again to the blaring sounds of the various alarms that had lit up inside the plane and even to Larry's presence at her side now that all of her attention was consumed by the ghost of her past.

"In the flesh," Alex quipped with a casual tone—like they were chatting inside a library or a bar instead of in the middle of a crashing plane—and Piper drank her nonchalant features with astonishment. "Fancy meeting you here, uh?"

"What are you doing here?" Piper breathed out, not quite sure how to handle something that she was beginning to think had to be the dying hallucination of her oxygen starved brain.

Not that she was complaining, mind you. There were far worse sights to die to than Alex Vause smiling face.

"You know me," Alex replied, the smirk on her lips becoming strained as she fought to hang onto the back of Larry's seat throughout the increasingly violent shakings of the plane. "I'm always on my way to somewhere."

"What are you…?" Larry began, twisting his neck to peer at Alex with the same amazement that Piper had displayed before, something that made the blonde woman shiver with a much different kind of fear because if Larry could see her that meant that Alex was really here and there was no way that could be good news. "Who are you?"

Alex opened her mouth to reply—the arch of her eyebrows and sarcastic look on her face heralding an answer that Piper was sure she wouldn't like—but before she could speak a sudden jerk of the plane finally managed to dislodge Alex from her perch, sending her tumbling backwards into the arms of the bushy haired woman in the seat behind Piper's.

"Are you okay?" Piper cried and Alex gave her a tired thumbs up from her new seat in the woman's lap, her movements sluggish as she tried to stand up again.

"You done making nice, Vause?" The woman behind Piper snarled, shoving Alex back into the empty seat behind Larry's (and God, had she been sitting there the whole time?). "Because let me tell you, there are more pressing things to deal with right now than your little reunion."

"I know, Nichols." Alex replied, slipping her oxygen mask back on and leaning back against the seat to take a few deep breaths. "I just figured this thing wasn't going anywhere for a while longer, so I had time for a quick hello."

"You know her?" Larry asked again, and Piper turned to face him with an incredulous look on her face.

You would think that the _one_ benefit of being inside a falling plane would be that she wouldn't have to answer those kind of questions. A weak snicker drifted from Alex's seat and out of the corner of her eye, Piper saw the black haired woman's eyes flashing with mirth, obviously waiting for some sort of answer, one that Piper was sure Alex would have provided herself if she wasn't so busy sucking air through the oxygen mask life a drowning woman.

"We can do the introductions later." Nichols interrupted angrily, saving Piper from having to come up with an answer and drawing a scoff from Alex's mouth. "We have a falling plane on our hands right now!"

"Right now the best thing we can do is wait and see if we end up losing another engine." Alex supplied from her seat in between labored breaths. "So chill the fuck out already."

Then, while everyone was busy processing _that_ bit of information, Alex jumped to her feet and retrieved a black backpack from the luggage compartment above her seat in a swift movement, closing the door and sitting down again before anyone had time to stop her.

"_Another?_" Larry squeaked out, latching onto the one thing that made some sort of sense to him. "What do you mean by another?"

Alex made a show of rolling her eyes, slipping her glasses off her face and stuffing them into the backpack at her feet before continuing to root around its insides, not bothering to look at Larry as she answered. "That sound you heard before the masks dropped down? That was an engine going down."

"How can you possibly know that, Vause?" Nichols asked, crouching into the crash position a second later to ride out a jarring bout of turbulence that forced Piper to tear her eyes away from Alex to do the same.

"I just know!" Alex shouted confidently, and for her part Piper had no doubt that the woman was right.

For someone that had never been into a college except to party, Alex was one of the more educated persons that Piper knew, and there was no way of knowing for sure what subjects fell into her area of expertise until you asked. Given how much time Alex spend on the air, Piper wasn't surprised to discover that the woman had more than a passing knowledge on the inner workings of a plane.

"What does that mean for us?" Piper asked once the worse of the turbulence had passed, turning back to face Alex. "Can we land with one engine?"

"There's two left." Alex pointed out softly, still rooting through the backpack. "And I have no idea, but right now the plane is depressurizing and until we reach a safe altitude we run the risk of passing out if we don't use the oxygen masks."

"But you just…" Larry let the words trail off, pointing to the back of his seat where Alex had been standing a second ago, mask-less.

"That was me being an idiot." Alex snapped, and Piper saw the woman retrieve a small plastic casing from inside the backpack and stuff it in the front pocket of her jeans before she turned her head up to glare at Larry. "Don't try it or you'll end up like the rest of them." Here Alex pointed out towards the rest of the seats, where Piper could make out the forms of several unconscious passengers; outside of their group only the flight attendant seemed to be clinging to consciousness and the woman's form was barely visible through the curtain that divided the different sections of the plane. "Screamed too much and breathed too little, those poor bastards."

Larry gulped and shrunk back into his seat, taking a deep breath off his mask and reaching for Piper's hand, a move that Piper didn't fail to notice made Alex's eyes flash with green fire before she returned her gaze to her backpack and its contents.

"So what the hell do you think is going on?" Nichols asked after a few moments, breaking the silence that had fallen over all of them and Piper heard Alex laugh heartily in response.

"You really suck at silence, don't you?" Alex chuckled, a sound that Piper had no idea how much she had missed until she heard it again.

"I would rather hear you talk than keep listening to this fucking plane falling apart." Nichols pointed out, and Piper was once again made aware of the sound of the rushing wind and the struggling motors that rumbled around her, a grim reminder that, Alex or not, this still could very well be the last moment of her life.

Perhaps sensing everyone's growing discomfort, Alex launched into an explanation about the engines and fuel (all located in the wings) along with her theories about the possible cause of the explosion, and it actually worked for a minute for Piper; the constant cadence of Alex's speech enveloping her in a warm cocoon of nostalgia and taking her back to the many lazy afternoons that they had spend resting in Alex's luxurious bed, where the woman had read to her for hours on end.

It was a nice daydream, but the illusion didn't last long, shattering the second that a loud, metallic screech resounded through the cabin. The sound drew a scream from Piper's throat as she curled in on herself to ride out the sudden drop of altitude that followed and that, unlike the other times, didn't stopped so much as simply slowed down.

"What the hell? Vause! Get back here!" Nichols screamed prompting Piper to turn around to watch as Alex sprang out of her seat and made her way across the cabin towards the entrance to the first class, disappearing from view once she crouched besides the distressed flight attendant and the curtain that shielded the area from the passengers view.

Piper could have sworn her heart stopped beating for the few moments that Alex was hidden from her sight—her mind providing pictures of the black haired woman lying unconscious behind the curtain, unable to ask for assistance—and it didn't went back to beating until Alex stumbled back into the first class cabin, carrying a bunch of life vest on her hands and being followed closely by the flight attendant that clung to the back of her leather jacket with a white-knuckled grip.

As soon as Alex drew close enough, Piper grabbed the woman's hand and helped to steady her, taking off her oxygen mask and offering it to Alex when she collapsed beside Piper's seat.

"It's okay, at this height I think we have at least ten minutes before we run out of air." Alex explained, motioning to Nichols to take care of the flight attendant and breathing in some oxygen all the same before returning the mask to Piper. "And that's more time than this piece of junk has left."

"I'm almost afraid to ask." Nichols sighed, patting the flight attendant's back absentmindedly as the woman recovered, eyeing the life vest with wariness.

"She's right," The flight attendant blurted out after she managed to catch her breath. "We can fly with two engines, but not with one. We can't even land that way."

Alex nodded, passing the life vest around. "Put that on, all of you, and hang in there. One way or another, this is going to end soon."

"What's the plan, Vause?" Nichols asked while Piper scrambled to obey Alex's instructions, passing one of the vests to Larry and helping him tighten the numerous buckles. "And dear fucking god, please tell me you have one."

"I always have a plan." Alex replied, motioning towards the curtain that divided the classes with a grimace. "There's a lot more room in the crew's rest area—seems there was some sort of commotion in coach and all those fuckers when there to help—and better seat-belts too, so we should make our way over there before the last engine decides to give up the ghost."

Before anyone had time to object or even comment on her plan, Alex stood up, grabbed her backpack, and stalked away from them back the way she had come from.

"Who the hell is that woman?" The flight attendant asked with amazement, before moaning pitifully. "And why didn't she tell me that she was planning on going back there? It would have saved me a trip."

"That's Vause for you," Nichols drawled. "She likes to play things close to the vest."

Before the conversation could carry on, Piper stood up, dodging Larry's attempt to stop her, and ran across the cabin to catch up with Alex.

"Alex, what are-"Piper started as soon as she was beside her, but she didn't got the chance to finish her question because Alex lunged towards her the second they cleared the curtain, pinning her against the side of the plane in a move that stole Piper's breath away and rendered her mute instantly.

"Here," Alex whispered softly in Piper's ear, the hand that she wasn't using to support herself running down Piper's rib-cage and stomach with searing intensity before she lowered it down to the blonde's jeans, sticking her hand in the pocket and caressing Piper's thigh along the way. "That's _your_ life vest. Don't lose it."

Then, before Piper could react to the contact, Alex took a step back and strapped herself to one of the crew's seats, just in time for the rest of their group to clear the curtain as well, leaving Piper to scramble for a seat with the rest of them while her mind tried to process what had happened.

"What are you doing?" Larry asked the second everyone was strapped to something, and Piper finally noticed the box that was trapped between Alex's feet. "And what's that?"

"No questions." The woman snapped, never taking her eyes away from the box. "Just… shut the fuck up."

"Yes, Ma'am," Larry joked, doing a mock salute and chuckling hysterically at his attempt at a joke, tears streaming down his eyes that had nothing to do with mirth, the sight of which made Alex roll her eyes and send Piper her patented, '_Is he fucking serious_' look.

Piper simply ignored her and laid a comforting hand on Larry's thigh, unable to blame either of them for their actions. When her boyfriend was scared, he turned to babbling and bad jokes for comfort.

Alex just turned into a jerk.

"There you go, Nichols." Alex said after a second, taking out something from inside the box and tossing it to the floor in between the group. "A fucking plan."

Alex's 'plan' looked a lot like a suitcase, albeit a yellow one, and it wasn't until Piper leaned forward to read the small label on the side that her eyes widen in recognition and fear.

Because, holy fuck. Was the woman fucking serious?

"Is that a life raft?" Larry gasped, eyeing the object with a terror that Piper could sympathize with.

Alex didn't answered, simply rolled her eyes once again in a move that Piper was beginning to think she reserved for every word out of Larry's mouth. "Yes it is."

"A raft?" Nichols echoed, watching the suitcase with wide eyes. "That's your fucking plan?"

"I never said it was a good one." Alex defended, her features hard as she took hold of the suitcase again, keeping it from sliding away because of the plane's movement. "But this fucker is going to split open any second now, and once that happens the piece of plane we're left with is going to sink down like a motherfucker, dragging us down with it. So we're going to jump off before that happens."

"What?!" "No way!" "Are you insane?"

The protest were cut short after that because a third explosion rocked the plane, accompanied by the familiar screech of metal being torn apart, rushing wind and drop of altitude that signaled the beginning of their free fall into the ocean.

"Just get ready to jump in as soon as you get the chance!" Alex shouted over the sound, clutching the suitcase with a white-knuckled grip as she they were knocked around the confines of their seat-belts with violence. "And don't let go!"

After that everything went to hell around them, and time slowed down for Piper as her world turned into a series of flashes of disconnected images that she could barely keep up with.

A ball of fire that broke out from somewhere beyond them, so strong that Piper could feel the heat in her cheek and the most awful sound she had ever heard as the plane was torn in half by the force of the explosion.

Human bodies flying out of the cabin as the force of suction fought to rip Piper from her seat, and the screams of her companions once the ocean became visible through the massive gap in the cabin, still looking impossibly far away despite their prolonged fall.

Watching as Alex fought against her restrains to deploy the life raft in the middle of the now spacious cabin—most of the seats having been ejected in the initial suction, and god, that would have been them if it wasn't for Alex—and the rush of sound as the tail of the plane and it's burning wings disappeared from view leaving them alone with the sky and the ocean.

A streak of black hair as Alex forced her way to the opening, holding onto the life raft by the rope that twisted along its perimeter as she shouted orders to the rest of the group.

And finally a warm, soft hand on her arm, unbuckling Piper from her seat and shaking her with punishing force until Piper's brain was cached up with her body, thrusting her back to the present with a painful gasp.

"We have to go now, Piper!" Alex shouted in her ear, pushing Piper out of her seat and towards the raft that the rest of their group was holding in front of the gaping hole of the plane.

"I can't do it, Alex!" Piper yelled, digging in her heels and watching the ocean that they were rushing to meet with wide eyes. "No way! We'll die!"

"Just count to three and do it!" Alex shouted back over the rushing wind, taking a hold of Piper's hand and pulling her towards the gap. "What do you have to lose? Trust me, we'll be fine!"

Those last words were enough to give Piper a pause, because this wasn't the first time that Alex had asked for her trust before shoving her head first into some new, exciting adventure; back then Piper had never found in herself the will to refuse the black haired woman and her wicked smile, no matter how scary or unconventional the request, she had always accepted, but Piper wasn't that wide-eyed, fresh out of college ingénue anymore.

She had reinvented herself after leaving Alex, became the woman that she had always been meant to be—a _straight_, milder version of herself—and she had swore that she had left her wild years behind, buried in a deep grave in a different continent.

And yet…

"Okay!" Piper shouted, the warm sensation of Alex hand on her own the only thing that kept her grounded to the moment, because some things never changed, no matter the time and distance, and apparently her trust in Alex was one of them. "Okay, I'll do it!"

_One_.

Piper followed Alex towards the raft, grabbing hold of the rope in her free hand and turning away from the ocean to find Alex's eyes—free from the black rimmed glasses—with her own, examining the woman's face with intensity.

_Two._

There was some fear there, sure, but Piper could also make out a hint of hidden mirth that always seemed to exist at the core of Alex Vause's existence—like a burning flame that refused to go out no matter what—and in that moment Piper could almost make out the words that she was sure were rushing though Alex's mind.

"_Just imagine, kid. If we survive this, what a story we'll have!_"

_Three._

Before she could think better of it Piper rushed towards the opening, hands wrapped around the rope with a strength she didn't know she possessed and the hint of a smile in her face; because even free falling out of a crashing plane with only a life raft as parachute was not so bad when Alex Vause was around to hold her hand.

* * *

**You guys have no idea how many times I've rewritten this chapter but at least now it's over and our survivors are officially off that cursed plane.**

** Originally I was planning for a more realistic escape (a somewhat boring account of how they just hanged on to their seats as the plane crashed in the ocean) but this way sounded a lot more heroic and that's what fanfics are for in the end, a little break from reality and its rules, so I went with the life raft parachute. **

**Thanks again for all your kind words, I haven't gotten the chance to answer them (I'm still swamped with work and I figured you would all prefer I used my free time working in the fic) but I read every one of them. They're really inspiring. I hope you enjoyed this chapter (it wasn't my personal favorite to be honest, but I really wanted to get them off the plane and into a setting I was slightly more familiar with) and you can expect a lot more interaction between our favorite characters next chapter.**

**As always, thank you for reading.**

**Valkyrium.**


	4. Turbulent Waters

**Chapter Four:**

_Turbulent Waters._

The secret to remaining calm in stressful situations, Alex had found, was to keep your attention on the task at hand and ignore any and all long term plans or consequences that may be looming on your horizon. For example, there was nothing frightening about searching around a plane's storage for a life raft so long as you didn't stop long enough to really think about what it was that you were planning on doing with it.

That same reasoning was to blame as to why, when Alex jumped off the burning remains of the plane, she wasn't thinking about anything beyond holding onto the rope in her hands for dear life—eyes closed against the rushing wind and mouth tightly shut to keep from screaming—and was thus wholly unprepared for the jolt that followed the raft's landing in the ocean, remaining curled in her place for a whole minute before her brain managed to kick start into gear and she finally registered the rhythmic movement of the raft and the salty smell of the ocean that filled the air around her.

The second she did, however, a breathless chuckle escaped from her throat because holy fuck, that meant that her insane—damn near _suicidal_—plan had actually worked and she was alive.

She was alive.

Alex opened her hands slowly, painfully aware of the stiffness brought by her white-knuckled grip on the rope, and found the strength to raise her head and look around the raft—not sure if she wanted to shout in triumph or break down crying just for the hell of it but needing to do _something_ with all the adrenaline that was still coursing through her veins—but the second that she did all the blood froze inside her veins.

There was no one around.

"Piper?" Alex asked unsteadily, cursing her poor eyesight as she scanned the empty raft and the nearby water for signs of her companions. "Nichols?"

There was no reply. Alex spat out a colorful curse and shrugged off the backpack that was still strapped to her back, digging around its inside until she found her black rimmed glasses—glasses that had miraculously survived the fall—and put them on with shaking hands before going back to watching the ocean with growing dread.

"Piper! Nichols!" Alex called out, her heart hammering in her throat as the fear that she had barely managed to keep at bay in the plane returned with a vengeance, threatening to turn into an uncontrollable panic at the prospect of being the sole survivor of the tragedy. "Anyone!"

Again, there was no reply so Alex punched the raft with all her strength with tears welling up in her eyes, sure that her heart was going to give up any second now rather than face yet another tragedy all by herself, but she never got the chance to find out because in that moment her ears caught the sound of a pained gasp coming from somewhere at her back and Alex turned around so fast that she almost gave herself whiplash.

"Hello?" Alex asked tentatively; afraid to get her hopes up and have them crash down around her if she discovered that the sound had been only in her head. "Anyone there?"

"I'm here." A voiced replied immediately, sending a wave of relief washing over Alex's body even as a grimaced formed on her face. This wasn't exactly what she had in mind when she had asked for 'anyone' but beggars can't be choosers. "Help me up!"

"Hang on," Alex replied softly, making her way towards the voice with a slow, deliberate crawl—partly because her muscles still felt a bit like jelly after everything that had happened and partly because she was just not that eager to find _this_ particular survivor—and once she reached the edge of the raft Alex peered down into the water, eyeing Piper boyfriend as he floated beside the raft with the aid of his life vest with a weary sigh.

The man didn't looked too worse for wear, at least as far as Alex could make out; he was still in one piece and floating without any obvious signs of injure besides a small cut on his forehead (and there was a _little_ part of Alex that was a bit disappointed about that) and even that seemed to have stopped bleeding thanks to his dip in the salty water of the ocean.

"Help me up," the man pleaded again, reaching up with one hand and wrapping the other one around the rope in order to hoist himself out of the water and—to her credit—Alex only hesitated for a second before taking the offered limb and helping him haul his body into the raft. After all, the proverb: 'Better alone than in bad company,' had never applied to Alex in the slightest and even the moron's company was preferable to being all alone.

Which, of course, didn't mean that she had to like it, Alex decided, dropping the man's hand the second he was out of the water as if it had burned her.

"Thank you," The man wheezed out and Alex accepted the sentiment with a terse nod. "Where… where are the others?"

The moron gazed around the raft with a confused frown—almost like he was expecting the missing members of their group to materialize out of thin air in front of his eyes—before turning back to face Alex with slightly panicked eyes. "Where is Piper?"

"No idea," Alex informed him curtly, turning her back on him as she went back to her task of scanning the ocean. "They should be around here, somewhere."

_Or at least their bodies should be_, a dark voice whispered in Alex's ear but she forced the thought away with a firm shake of her head. If both she and the moron had made it in one piece there was a good chance that Piper, Nichols and the flight attendant were alive too.

They fucking had to be.

"I held on through the fall, but I bounced off when we landed after… after the plane." The moron babbled softly and Alex's trained ears immediately picked up the tinge of hysteria hidden in his voice, prompting a silent groan to escape from the woman's lips. She didn't had the time to deal with this right now. "Oh god, the plane!"

"Hey!" She called out strongly, infusing her words with the commanding quality that she used to keep her mules in line and enjoying the way it made the man jumped to attention. "Check that corner over there and try to find a flare gun or something along those lines," she instructed, pointing towards the small storage area of the raft. Hopefully having a clear, defined task ahead of him would be enough to pull his mind away from the edge. "We need to let them know where we are in case they landed too far away to be able to see the raft."

For a second the man looked lost, his eyes clouded and red rimmed with unshed tears, but the second passed and he managed to nod firmly. "Okay, I can do that."

Alex watched as the man set out to fulfill the task in silence with begrudging respect. She knew from oh-so-painful experience just how hard it could be to put a person back together once they had allowed themselves to break down—hell, some never managed it—and keeping it together was not an easy task to do in the best of cases, let alone at a moment like this one.

He was still a moron, of course, but he wasn't a _weak_ moron, and that had to count for something.

It didn't take long for the man to find what he was looking for and soon he presented the items to Alex with the hint of a smile on his face. "Here, a gun and three flares. There's also some food and water in there."

"Good," Alex acknowledged, taking the gun from his hand. She had been hoping that there would be a few more things in there, but there had been no way of knowing just how many items could be safely stored inside an inflatable raft. No nearly enough that they didn't had to worry about food and water, that was for sure. "We have to make an inventory of what we have."

Not urgently, of course, but it was as good a task as any to keep him busy.

"Okay, I'm on it." The man agreed, not seeming to care about the banality of his task, still looking quite shell shocked but willing enough to follow instructions, and Alex turned away from him with a relieved sigh.

If that hadn't distracted him, they would have been in trouble, or at least he would have; Alex might want to keep the man around and functioning but she drew the line at doing any actual comforting. Let his girlfriend do that for him when (when and not if) they found her.

Maybe then Alex could get enough breathing room to do some breaking down of her own.

_Small steps Vause_, Alex reminded herself as she loaded the gun and fired one of the flares into the sky, watching the resulting sparks with a thoughtful frown. _That's the key, small steps_.

The signal wasn't quite as visible as she would have liked—not nearly as much as it would have been had it been fired in the night—but the overcast sky offered a nice contrast to the bright red light of the flare, making it stand out enough that anyone nearby could get a good idea of their general location.

Now they just had to wait.

The next few minutes were hell for Alex as the woman fought to keep her mind from wandering to dark places while time passed and there was no change in the water around them; restless beyond measure but not yet desperate enough to join Larry in the counting and re-counting of their meager supplies, Alex choose instead to watch ocean in silence, fidgeting with her glasses every few seconds.

She was barely paying attention to the sea in front of her; her mind filled with nightmarish images of Piper's lifeless body floating in the ocean or Nichols' bleeding, drowning form being swallowed up by the waves as she tried to swim despite some gruesome injury, so at first Alex didn't noticed the small, yellow dot that appeared among the waves but the second she did her heart stopped for a second before going back to beating so fast that she was sure it was about to jump out of her chest.

"There! Do you see that?" Alex asked, pointing towards her discovery in desperate need for confirmation that the image in front of her wasn't just a product of wishful thinking. "What's that?"

The moron dropped the supplies instantly, crawling closer to Alex's position and letting out a relieved laugh the second that he reached her side. "That's Piper! She made it!"

A thousand unspoken fears lifted from Alex shoulder in that moment.

Piper was okay.

Out of the corner of her eye Alex saw the moron jump to his feet, waving his arms around like a maniac—as if Piper hadn't already seem them, the idiot—but Alex refused to take her eyes off of the blonde long enough to actually roll them at the moron's antics. Piper might have been a strong swimmer even without the life vest but Alex wasn't willing to take the chance that the fall might have affected her skills in any way (and maybe she simply wasn't ready to let the woman out of her sight, sue her) so watched her progress like a hawk, ready to jump to the blonde's aid if it became necessary.

(Besides, even if she would never act on it, Alex felt a little bit like jumping herself so she could forgive the moron for his enthusiasm, just this once.)

Fortunately, however, there was no need for heroics and a couple of minutes later Piper reached the raft, floating directly in front of Alex with a smile on her face as she echoed the words that the black-haired woman had said to her on the plane. "Fancy meeting you here, stranger."

"Hello," Alex greeted back, fighting to keep a semblance of cool in the face of Piper's arrival and failing miserably as her face broke into a huge grin at the sight of the Piper, safe and sound and within reach. "We keep running into each other in the weirdest of places, uh?"

"That we do," Piper agreed, sticking a hand out the water and offering it to Alex with a teasing smile. "Now, will you give a girl a hand up?"

"I don't know, I've always liked the idea of you under me," Alex joked softly but she wasted no time in taking Piper's hand in her own, reveling the warm—incredibly _alive_—feeling of it before helping the woman up into the raft with a quick pull that was almost enough to sent the blonde sprawling on top of Alex.

It was probably for the best that Piper managed to hold herself steady at the last second—considering that she was dripping wet and Alex was still mercifully dry—or at least that's what Alex told herself when the woman recovered her balance without further contact with her.

"You scared the shit out of me, kid." Alex confessed softly, running her thumb over the back of Piper's hand, too busy drinking in the sight of the woman in front of her to really notice the way Piper flinched at her grip on her hand. "Don't do that again."

Whatever Piper had been about to say in reply was lost to Alex because the moron chose that moment to barrel into her from behind, pushing her to the side in his haste to engulf Piper into a hug and Alex could only watch from the side lines as the reunited couple kissed each other among tearful greetings.

Fuck; for a moment she had almost forgotten about _that_.

"Piper, you're here." The man cried, his face disappearing from Alex view as he hid it in Piper's neck while the black-haired woman picked herself up slowly, unable to take her eyes away from the couple in front of her even if her whole being was rebelling at the sight of the two of them toguether. "What the hell happened to you?"

"I couldn't hold on," Piper explained, her eyes finding Alex's over the moron's shoulder and holding both palms up behind the man's back, making Alex flinch involuntarily at the sight of them; there was a nasty looking red line that ran across the palms of both of Piper's hands—proof of her desperate attempt to hold on to the rope—and the way the woman held them indicated they must still hurt a great deal. "But at least the fall wasn't that bad; I still remembered how to fall from that time we went cliff diving, Alex."

"That's great for you," Alex muttered sullenly, doing her best to ignore the protective feeling that a hurt Piper evoked in her in favor of scanning the ocean in search of the rat's nest that Nichols called hair. "Now if you two love birds don't mind, there are still two missing members of our group that might need our help…"

Alex let the words trail off, pretending she couldn't see the wounded look that came over Piper's face at her dismissal. Fuck her. Piper didn't get to be offended about anything that Alex said or did when she was wrapped in the arms of someone else.

Not that Alex had wanted a fucking hug or anything like that to begin with. No sir. That blonde bitch could go back to the fucking water for all that Alex cared.

Let the sharks have her.

"They're fine," Piper pointed out softly and Alex could have sworn she felt the blonde's 'wounded deer' look aimed at the back of her neck. "We landed close to each other but the flight attendant was freaking out a bit because she couldn't swim so your friend offered to wait with her until she calmed down enough to tow her over. They should be here any second now."

A mix of cold fury and relief invaded Alex's body at the news and she forced herself to swallow down the insult that was begging to come out of her mouth. Of course Piper wouldn't mention that first thing, it was Piper for fuck's sake (and it wasn't like Alex had thought to ask, so there was that too) and it wouldn't do to pick a fight here and now.

Not when Alex could feel her emotions as raw as an exposed nerve, ready to blow at the slightest provocation. Not when Alex might say—or admit—things that she would later regret.

But oh, it would be so good to have a proper fight. Piper might have forgotten about the ace that she had given Alex in the form of years of a relationship that the blonde wanted to keep a secret, but Alex certainly hadn't and in that moment the urge to use it was almost overwhelming.

"Uh, I think that's them over there?" Piper's boyfriend pointed out, clearing his throat in an effort to break the awkward silence that had fallen inside the raft.

Alex let her eyes drift towards the sea, smiling faintly at the sight of her friend's swimming form as she made her way towards the raft with the flight attendant hanging around her neck, the tension that had clung to her since the plane had first started to show signs of malfunctioning finally dissipating enough to let her breath normally.

Everyone had made it alive—and unharmed too, if the way Nichols was moving was any indication—and maybe Alex could finally let herself focus on the positive for a minute; at least until the next crisis reared its ugly head, demanding her attention once again.

Alex didn't want to ruin this moment; her quarrel with Piper could wait for a while longer.

"And here I thought I had finally gotten rid of you," Alex teased the second that Nichols was close enough to hear her. "But you just won't die."

"Fuck you," Nichols panted as she took hold of the rope that wound around the raft and helped the brunette on her back do the same, but the smile on her face took away any bite from her words. "As if anything you managed to survive could be enough to take _me _out."

"Yes, you're much like a cockroach in that way." Alex bantered back, reaching down to help her friend up and leaving the two love birds to deal with the flight attendant, watching with surprised amusement how Nichols hurried over to help the woman up the second that she herself made it up into the raft.

It seemed like Alex had missed some rather interesting piece of news there.

"I'm okay, thank you." The brunette wheezed out, shrugging off the hands that had helped her into the raft. "I'm Lorna Morello, by the way."

A round of introductions followed that statement and Alex chose to distant herself from the proceedings as soon as she could get away with it, grabbing the scattered cans of food that the moron had left behind in his haste to reach his girlfriend and trying to force her attention into the planning on how to distribute the food they had available; a task that took a depressingly short amount of time to complete.

In the end, no matter how carefully Alex planned, it would all depend on just how long it took for the rescue team to find them.

Unconsciously Alex's hand drifted to the front pocket of her jeans, feeling around for the little plastic square that served as her plan B and sighing in relief when her fingers brushed against it. As long as that bit of plastic remained in her pocket—and its twin remained in Piper's—there was still hope.

If Piper had managed to lose hers… well, it was better not to dwell too much on that.

"Alex?" Nichols whispered from behind her, causing the black-haired woman to turn around with an eyebrow raised in surprise. Nichols _never_ used her first name unless it was something really important.

"Yes?" She prompted when a minute passed and Nichols remained quiet.

"There- there's something you need to know." The smaller woman finally settled for saying, her voice a low whisper, before stopping once again, her voice betraying her reluctance to share the news with Alex.

"Well, we do have all day, so feel free to take your time." Alex quipped, going back to fiddling with the cans of supplies with the hint of a smirk on her face.

"I found two other survivors," Nichols blurted out suddenly, startling Alex so badly that she almost dropped one of the cans into the ocean. "They're floating on a bit of plane not too far from here, but neither of them knows how to swim and they don't have life vests… They're stuck."

The unspoken, _they're going to die out there if we don't help them_, resonated loudly between both women.

Alex's eyes shifted to the cans in front of her, the sight making her chest tighten uncomfortably; even rationed there was barely enough food to last them more than a couple of days, and the water supply was practically no-existent. They were going to have to depend on a pair of water condensers that Alex had found folded on the bottom of the storage and she had no idea how much water those things could generate.

Things didn't looked good, and if you added even more people to the mix…

"Are you the only one that saw them?" Alex asked with a lump on her throat, already trying to figure out how to cover this up even as her stomach churned at the choice that had to be made.

"No, your sweetheart left before I found them," Nichols began and Alex had enough presence of mind left to glare at the woman, "but Lorna was hanging to my neck when we ran into them."

And of course, the brunette chose that moment to blurt out the whole story to the love birds.

"You found someone else?" The moron asked with a hopeful grin on his face, something that made Alex groan internally. There went her hopes of keeping this a secret. "That's great! Where are they?"

"We're not going for them." Alex ordered firmly, making her voice thunder with as much authority as she could muster in the hopes of nipping the idea in the bud. "So don't even think about it."

And maybe that would have been enough to keep them all in line, had it not been for Piper. The rest of them might be too afraid of her to confront her (or in Nichols' case, were too loyal to try) but the blonde was no stranger to getting on Alex's face when she thought it was necessary.

"What do you mean we're not going for them?" Piper asked, watching Alex with disbelief written across her face.

"This life raft was meant for four people at most," Alex explained in a deceptively calm voice, internally cursing Piper and her bleeding heart that didn't knew when to back the hell down. "In case you haven't noticed, that puts us one person over the limit already. Do you really want to add two more _strangers_ into this mess?"

"They'll die if we abandon them!" The moron barked, encouraged by Piper's fearlessness and Alex saw Lorna nod in agreement beside him. "We have to help them!"

"No we don't." Alex refuted immediately; painfully aware that the fight was being lost but unable to stop herself from trying to change their minds. "The only thing we have to do is figure out a way to keep alive the people that are already in this fucking raft."

"You know what?" Piper hissed in the silence that ensued after Alex's words, eye blazing with righteous fury. "For a moment there I couldn't remember why on earth we had drifted apart but it didn't take more than five minutes for you to remind me _exactly_ why we ended things the way we did. You're a cold, fucking bitch."

The words hit Alex harder than a slap and she turned her face away from the woman in the hopes of hiding the pain that she was sure was shinning in her eyes, utterly unable to face the anger and disappointment in the blonde's face. Piper's approval had always meant more to Alex than she could admit, even to herself, and those words had hit hard on still bleeding wounds that had never gotten the chance the heal, disarming Alex completely in a single blow.

_Not completely_, the dark voice inside Alex's whispered again; _it would do Piper well to remember who has the more to lose, if push comes to shove_.

But Alex remained silent; the part of her that still yearned to be Piper's hero refused to let the confession of the nature of their relationship fly out of her mouth.

Couldn't Piper see that it was better to leave the poor souls to die far away from them, faceless and unmourned, than to have to watch them starve to death inside the raft as it would surely bound to happen if anything went even the slightless bit wrong with the rescue and they ended up stranded for days?

Couldn't she see that Alex was only trying to protect them?

Alex turned her plaintive gaze towards Piper, watching as the woman's face went from anger to regret over her harsh words even as she refused to back down.

Of course she couldn't see it; Alex had always been the pragmatic contrast to Piper's hopelessly romantic soul and the black-haired woman knew there was no hope of winning this battle—not when she was so damned tired already, unable to look past all the hurt of the past few hours to find the anger that she would need as fuel for a fight— and so, she surrendered with a pained sigh.

"Fine, but if we run out of food because of those fuckers you're going to be the first person I eat," Alex threatened half-heartily, turning her back on Piper and the rest of the survivors, unable to resist adding one final dig towards the blonde woman. "And not in the fun way, either."

The sputtering sound that followed—accompanied by Nichols' bark of laughter—was almost enough to cheer Alex up a bit.

Not much, mind you, but it was a start.

The next few minutes were spend drawing a rescue plan—something that Alex refused to be a part of, gazing moodily out at the ocean during the whole proceedings—and figuring out a way to move the raft in the right direction (quite a feat without any landmarks around to guide them, but damned Nichols had managed to keep track of the way she had come from) and Alex refused to budge even when the new additions were brought into the raft, keeping to herself as they introduced themselves.

One was a middle aged man called Sam Healy that didn't looked too worse for wear and the other was a young woman with a wounded ankle that went by the name of Doggett (the later had tried to get them all down on their knees to pray for deliverance the second that she was safe inside the raft, throwing a fit when Alex declined and damning the black-haired woman to hell instantly.)

Through it all Alex remained stubbornly silent, not saying a word until Nichols finally extracted herself from the group to check up on her, shuffling towards the corner that Alex had claimed as her own with tired movements.

"You got sick of futile prayers?" Alex asked, not bothering to lower the tone of her voice as she did, enjoying the dirty look that Doggett sent her way. That one was going to be a pain in Alex's ass no matter what, so she might as well enjoy riling her up.

"Just wondering how you were holding up, Vause." Nichols commented, ignoring Alex's dark mood with the ease of someone that was used to weathering Alex's temper on a regular basis.

"I'm peachy," Alex growled, lowering her voice enough that their conversation could remain relatively private. "Can't you see? I'm on cloud fucking nine here."

"That's something we're going to need to discuss at some point," Nichols whispered with a wry smile, her eyes drifting away from Alex for a moment before she snapped them back to the woman's face, "but I really don't see why you're so upset. Thing are not that bad."

"What have I told you about expecting the worse?"

"Oh for fuck's sake," Nichols whispered harshly. "I know it goes against your religion or something, but would it kill you to look at the bright side of things for a change? I mean, we made it off a crashing plane without a scratch—thanks to you, I might add—and we're all together. Maybe things are finally taking a turn for the best."

"Give it time," Alex muttered dryly. "With my luck things can always get worse before they get better, _if _they get better."

"Let's hope you're wrong this time, Vause." Nichols replied distractedly, her eyes drifting once again to a point beyond Alex's shoulder.

"I'm always right." Alex replied automatically, turning to follow Nichols' line of sight and smirking slightly once she saw what had caught the other woman's attention. The flight attendant was sitting alone on the opposite corner of the raft, looking rather lost. "Go for it, Nichols. I don't need you here to babysit me."

"Are you sure?" Nichols asked with a hopeful—if slightly guilty looking—expression, not bothering to deny her interest or ask how Alex had noticed. "Because I can stay here and brood with you if you'd like."

"I can do that just fine on my own." Alex replied wryly, not bothering to argue about her current state of mind. "Go make nice with the pretty lady."

"Thanks Vause." Nichols whispered quickly and Alex watched with amusement how the smaller woman practically bounced towards the brunette, drawing the woman's attention with a hand on her shoulder and striking up a conversation with her in a matter of seconds; the lucky bastard.

Alex watched them interact for a couple of minutes before lying down flat on her back with a long suffering sigh, tuning out the voiced of the rest of the survivors and going back to watching the ocean with tired eyes, letting her glasses fall away from her face and enjoying the way the world blurred around her.

There were six survivors, seven with Alex herself, stuck in the raft now—_in a raft meant for four_, a voice inside her head taunted her—and all of them were now under Alex's care in one way or another, whether they liked it or not. Two of them were even important enough to be called indispensable.

Another was the boyfriend of the woman that had once been the love of Alex's life.

A drop of water rolled down Alex's cheek and the woman blinked in a confused silence for a moment, wondering if her emotions had finally gotten the better of her and she had started to cry at some point during her musings, but then another drop landed on the tip of her nose and Alex figured it out.

It was starting to rain.

The woman turned her gaze towards the sky with trepidation. The grey clouds above them had darkened significantly at some point during the rescue—now that she was paying attention, wasn't the sea also rocking more than it had hours ago?—and a second later Alex caught sight of a flash of light that lit up the sky above her, followed by an ominous—if distant—rumbling sound that sent a shiver of fear down her spine.

"Fuck me." She whispered dismally as another drop of water landed right on her forehead.

Sometimes Alex really, really hated to be right.

* * *

**That took a lot longer than I had planned, but finals and work got a bit on the way. I hope the extra long chapter makes up for it a little bit. I apologize for any mistake you find in advance, all of them are mine.**

**And hey, what did you guys think? Now the group is finally complete (I needed to add some villains to the mix) and I promise, next chapter will kick off with the island (finally!) and we'll get to see our leading ladies get some time alone away from all the distractions of the plane and the raft, so stay tuned for the next update. **

**As always, thank you for reading.**

**Valkyrium.**


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